Redefining Professional Vectors

“In the world of vectors, direction is everything.” — Josiah Willard Gibbs

In the spring of 2000, I went in search of a new suit. I spent $400 on a silk suit under the assumption that it would be the last interview suit I’d ever buy. I was about to enter the academy. I would be a curriculum professor, and I fully expected to spend the next forty years teaching graduate students about John Dewey and curriculum theory. I would write theoretical research about education, leadership, the purpose of schooling, partnerships, and curriculum. This was my future.

I entered the academy the way I entered my doctoral program: an intense triple Aries. Whatever the challenge, I rose to it. With my background in school administration, I quickly stepped into leadership roles—coordinating programs, serving on promotion and tenure committees, and offering my observations freely. If you ask me to lead, I will lead. At Illinois State University, I was immediately assigned to the promotion and tenure committee. After our first year of reviews, I sat with the department chair and explained how we were failing new faculty—even though I was one of them. Together, we developed supports for those who were struggling.

I brought that same intensity to my scholarship. I published across multiple disciplines—foundations, curriculum, teacher education, leadership, and educational research. It wasn’t enough to publish in a top-tier journal in “my” subfield. I had taken coursework for multiple doctorates, so I challenged myself to publish in top-tier journals across sub-disciplines, and I succeeded. That cross-disciplinary work made me a better mentor to my graduate students.

The first decade of my academic career was defined by intensity—moving from Illinois State University to Georgia State University, working almost exclusively with doctoral students. At Illinois State, my students developed frameworks based on Deweyan inquiry that outlined the conditions necessary for inquiry at the personal, instructional, institutional, and societal levels. At Georgia State, my Postmodern Curriculum Theorizing students walked through Oakland Cemetery at dusk and then gathered in a tavern to discuss what it means to be historical beings shaped by shared lived experiences. My 26 doctoral students in the North Georgia Cohort spent 72 hours at a retreat center writing their prospectuses—meeting with my colleague and me repeatedly until they got it right.

In 2009, I experienced my first major professional shift. I left the highly theoretical, research-intensive environment of Georgia State for regional institutions. I moved from a Ph.D. program to Ed.D. programs and began working with practitioners. The field was changing. Curriculum was changing. Opportunities to prepare faculty for research-intensive roles were shrinking. I had wrestled with what it meant to be part of a prestige-seeking institution. It was clear that the trajectory of higher education was shifting, and it became important to prepare thoughtful practitioners in regional contexts. This vector change included developing the executive Ed.D. at Georgia State and my work at Northern Kentucky University and West Virginia University.

In 2013, I experienced my second major shift. Ed.D. programs had exploded nationally, and their quality varied widely—including those I had been part of. I decided it was time to return to full-time leadership. This shift allowed me to work with undergraduates and immerse myself in teacher preparation as a department chair. It was my first time working directly with undergraduate students, and I loved learning from their perspectives. I supervised student teaching and visited classrooms, seeing firsthand how students applied what they were learning.

That shift became a growth trajectory—from department chair to dean and ultimately to dean and provost at a minority-serving urban institution. At New Jersey City University, I connected more deeply with the transformative power of education on students, their families, and their communities. Years earlier, when I coordinated the leadership program at Georgia State, I led a strategic planning process that concluded the quality of life in Georgia communities would improve because of the leaders we prepared. At the time, it felt like an academic statement crafted in a conference room. At NJCU, I saw it happening in real time.

Now, I am excited about the next major professional shift. The landscape of higher education continues to change. Many are questioning the value of a degree, especially when debt is involved. The relationship between degrees and workforce development has never been more important. In the past, it may have been enough to invite external stakeholders to symbolically share their opinions. Today, those partnerships are essential. The role of the anchor institution has never been more critical.

I believe the community college is the key to the future of higher education. It provides access to students, community members, agencies, and industry. It represents what is possible when higher education and municipalities work together. With this in mind, I am thrilled to join Hudson Valley Community College as its new Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs on July 1, 2026. HVCC is part of the SUNY system and is the largest community college in upstate New York. It enrolls more than 20,000 students and has robust workforce development programming. The beauty of the campus is matched only by the earnestness and commitment of its community of stakeholders and the leadership of its exceptional president, Dr. Michael Brophy.

Vectors change when external forces act on a system. Higher education is experiencing significant forces—economic, demographic, political, and cultural—and we must respond in kind. This is not always easy. Academic careers are often built through independent journeys reinforced by specialized identities. In some ways, we must be selfish to survive the tenure and promotion process. But it cannot be about us. It must be about the larger system we serve.

The question, then, is not whether the vector will change. It is whether we will recognize when the forces acting on us require a new direction—and whether we will redefine our professional vectors with purpose, clarity, and courage. Our work must contribute to the social good. Our knowledge and skills must support the larger enterprise, the community, and society. Ultimately, our legacies should be measured not by the lines on a CV but by the lives, institutions, and communities whose trajectories we helped shift.